


heliocentrism

by elsaclack



Series: since the dawn of time [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6395194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Amy goes undercover for some time (months maybe??). Jake goes crazy because he misses her like hell and is worried about her. He is very sad. Then she comes back and they are very cute (lots of fluff please!!)</p><p>You only need the light when it's burning low, only miss the sun when it starts to snow, only know you love her when you let her go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the peraltiago-fanfiction tumblr, based on the following prompt:
> 
> "amy goes undercover for some time (months maybe??). Jake goes crazy because he misses her like hell and is worried about her. He is very sad. Then she comes back and they are very cute (lots of fluff please!!)"
> 
> ...I don't know how well I did on the "fluff" part but I definitely covered my bases with the going crazy and being very sad part, haha. This was originally supposed to be a one shot but twenty pages later I realized that it really wasn't gonna stop until it ruined my life.
> 
> I just have so many feelings about DETECTIVES

The first time Jake sees Amy after she’s gone undercover, he’s on a date.

It’s been a month since she left and even though the sight of her empty desk still sends a weird pang he doesn’t fully understand through his chest, he likes to think that he’s functioning well without his partner. He’s made three arrests since she left, which has kept him out of hot water with Captain Holt, and has filled most of his nights with heavy drinking and darts at Shaw’s with Rosa, Gina, and Charles, or else filled with pointless dates that he knows will lead to nowhere with an endless line of women. The leading nowhere part doesn’t stop him from asking pretty women out, though, because he knows that if he goes home alone he’ll be left with wandering thoughts that almost always lead to wondering about Amy. He assures himself that it’s normal to wonder about his partner of five years, to hope that she’s getting on alright undercover, to hope that she has somewhere safe to lay that head of thick jet-black hair that somehow always smells like strawberries at night.

Sure, it’s normal, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

So he’s at this dumpy little Italian place with a very loud redhead whose name he’s already forgotten, a real hole in the wall three blocks from Times Square that is so ridiculously overpriced that he kind of wishes he’d gone to Shaw’s with Gina like she offered to instead after work. It’s all normal, and then it’s not, because suddenly he looks up and sees _her_.

Amy looks pretty. It’s obvious she’s put a lot of effort into dressing up for the evening. He can see she’s wearing a red blouse that makes her olive skin glow and her hair is down and done in cascading waves and her makeup is light and refined. She’s with some massive man who’s probably the same size as Terry in a tailored suit and Jake guesses he could fit at least three Boyles in the jacket alone. They’re seated toward the back, in a corner booth that just _screams_ criminal activity. He recognizes the lilt in her laughs that drift over the crowd between them and the gleam in her eye; she’s playing this guy. He knows something, and she’s _going_ to figure it out.

He’s halfway through the motions of pulling his phone out to prank call her when he suddenly remembers the reality of the situation.

Amy’s on a date with a mobster.

_There’s_ a fact he never thought would be true.

His date is prattling on about something to do with pedicures or maybe dogs but his undivided attention is now fixated on Amy. She’s pretty convincing to the untrained eye, but Jake has extensive experience in staking out/ruining Amy Santiago’s dates, and he knows a bad Santiago date when he sees it. Hulk man is leaning toward her, but instead of mirroring his posture like she would if she was actually invested, Amy unfolds her napkin and busies herself by smoothing it compulsively over her thighs. It’s an endearing move, has been since the first time he saw her do it on that date with the guy who turned out to be a puppeteer three years ago, but it’s her tell. She’s nervous, and not in a jittery first date kind of way. She reaches up to straighten her eating utensils and he sees her hand tremble, but only for a moment. She tucks her hair behind her left ear and tilts her head to the right with a dazzling smile that does not reach her eyes.

By then Jake’s date has noticed that he isn’t exactly paying attention to her. She swivels around in her seat and, before he can stop her, says “Do you know her?” loudly enough that the entire restaurant pauses and turns toward them.

Jake immediately ducks his head and hopes his ears aren’t as red as they feel like.

“ _No_ ,” he mumbles, “she just looks familiar. Like a woman I used to work with.”

This placates the redhead and she launches back into her tirade and Jake waits until the quiet chatter of the restaurant picks up again around him before slowly lifting his head.

Amy’s looking at him.

Her eyes are careful and guarded and he can sense the warning there. _Don’t fuck this up for me, Peralta._

“Y’know, this place is kind of garbage,” he says suddenly over his date. She, for the first time all night, is speechless. “The food is bad and the service is worse and you’re an idiot if you honestly think this is the best Italian food in New York - which, I might add, is actually Sal’s Pizza joint over in Brooklyn. You’re boring and we have nothing in common but I want to sleep with you, so, you wanna get out of here and go back to my place early?”

“Are you serious right now?” Jake braces himself and, sure enough, she throws her water in his face. The redhead stands and grabs her purse from the back of the chair as he dabs his napkin at his eyes. “New York’s Finest my _ass_!”

It’s oddly satisfying to watch her storm out of the restaurant. He ignores the scandalized expressions on those surrounding him as he stands, smirking to himself as he throws his NYPD windbreaker over his shoulder. “Well, I better get outta here before I make an even _bigger_ ass of myself,” he announces to the restaurant.

Jake spares one last glance at Amy before he leaves and her expression is unreadable.

The second time Jake sees Amy after she’s gone undercover, he’s casing a club.

It’s called Ooze and Jake _literally_ hates everything in existence the second he has to step into that pit of despair. He’s starting realizing he hates a lot of things lately, especially the fact that Holt has decided to move Scully into Amy’s old desk as an experiment to see if it makes Scully and Hitchcock more productive.

(It didn’t. It just resulted in Hitchcock and Scully’s conversations echoing through the entire precinct and Jake “straight up brooding,” as Gina put it, about how unfair it is that Holt’s already trying to replace Amy just three months into her undercover assignment.)

The one upside, Holt reasons when Jake voices his complaints, is that it encourages Jake to get out of the precinct and work more cases. He’s in the middle of one with Charles and Rosa and that’s why he had to go in - Charles would have stuck out like a sore thumb and Rosa would have ended up punching someone in the face five seconds in for having the nerve to talk to her.

So Jake begrudgingly volunteers and spends most of his night hunched over in a booth on the edge of the dance floor, watching sweaty, scantily-clad bodies gyrate and slowly nursing a scotch on the rocks while looking for signs of any drug deals in the shadows. “You see anything, Peralta?” Rosa’s voice filters through his earpiece.

“Not yet,” he mutters back. It’s a huge crowd, even for a Friday night, and even though Jake has witnessed _many_ bedroom-style activities going down on the dance floor that make him want to scrub his eyes with bleach, he hasn’t seen anything overtly illegal yet. The crowd parts briefly and he can see the VIP section, where half a dozen men are seated. And it’s across one of those men’s laps that Amy is currently draped. “Oh my God,” he says without thinking.

“What?”

“It’s Amy.”

" _Santiago_?" Rosa barks.

“ _Amy’s_ in there?” Charles suddenly gasps. “Oh, God, we might have bitten off more than we can chew, here.”

Something is happening in Jake’s chest, kind of like heartburn, only worse. It isn’t until he’s on his feet and moving toward her that he realizes it’s longing. She’s right there and it’s been almost 100 days since he’s gotten to talk to her and all he wants to do is hug her.

“Jake, you can’t talk to her,” Charles says. Jake freezes half-way across the dancefloor. “You’ll blow her cover.”

“Get out before she sees you,” Rosa demands.

But it’s too late for that. She’s turned her head to seek one of many drinks littering the table before her and her eyes drift up to the dancefloor and land on him almost instantly.

Jake turns away and makes a hasty retreat toward the bar. “She saw me,” he mutters.

“Get _out_ of there, Peralta!”

He almost crashes into the bar, which catches the bartender’s attention immediately. “Scotch on the rocks,” Jake calls without thinking.

“Jake, no -”

He feels her presence before he sees her next to him, and he freezes, scared to even move his head. “Vodka tonic,” she calls in a perfect Brooklyn accent. Her go-to get-me-drunk- _now_ drink, the one she pounded back the last time a guy dumped her and she went out for drinks with him and the other detectives. “Ya gotta go, Jake,” she says just loud enough for him to hear.

And for Rosa and Charles, too, apparently. “Listen to her, buddy.” Charles says.

“I’m heading out,” he says to Amy, keeping his gaze straight ahead even though he desperately wants to look at her. From the corner of his eye he can see that she’s still looking around the club and bobbing her head to the beat, showing no sign to anyone that might be watching that she knows him. And he’s standing stock-still like one of those street performers that pretends to be a statue. “You okay?” He asks as he sinks down to rest some weight on his forearms against the bar.

“Been better,” she says after a beat. For some reason that makes him irrationally angry, so he clenches his jaw until it feels like his teeth are going to crack. “Don’t make an ass of yourself,” she warns.

“Too late,” Rosa snickers in his ear. He loosens his jaw.

There are a thousand different emotions swirling through his head and even more people pressing up against him, trying to get to the bar, which buffets him into Amy. Before he’s able to get his bearings, he finds himself pressed up against her so that they’re chest-to-chest, and for the first time since that disastrous date two months previously, he has a chance to look his partner in the eye.

She looks drop-dead gorgeous. She’s got that smokey-eye thing that Gina talks about constantly and her dress is black and slinky and it clings to her curves in a way that basically demands he check her out. She’s wearing heels - which he knows she hates because she can’t run very well in them - that are so strappy he wonders how long it took her to figure out how to get them on. His tongue darts out to wet his lips nervously upon realizing just how shapely the shoes make her legs look. At first glance, Amy Santiago is unbelievably _hot._

But as he looks closer, he starts noticing the things she’s likely worked very hard to hide from those who don’t know her nearly as well as he does. She’s got well-defined dark circles beneath her eyes and a cut above her right eye that both look as though they've been drowned in concealer. There’s a slice in her lower lip that’s just a shade darker than the lipstick she’s wearing but it looks like it’s well on the way to being fully healed. In the low light, they’re almost impossible to see, but Jake knows every nuance of her face so well that to him they stand out like neon signs. Her body presses up into his and she feels bonier than he remembers, like she’s lost some weight. Her eyes scan his face for a brief second, like she’s studying to memorize it with the photographic memory she’s always worked toward having, before she smiles cordially up at him and steps closer to the bar.

The loss of contact with her feels like the air’s been knocked out of his lungs.

“Scotch on the rocks and vodka tonic,” the bartender slides their drinks toward them at the same time and Amy deftly catches them both. She spins and thrusts his drink into his hand and, with a thoroughly convincing sultry wink, saunters back into the crowd toward her VIP section.

“Peralta, let’s go.” Rosa says in his ear. He throws the entire glass back in one gulp and he goes without looking back.

The third time Jake sees Amy after she’s gone undercover, he spots her through the scope of a sniper rifle.

He’s perched on a rooftop several buildings down from the auto parts manufacturing plant that’s being robbed and there’s something like excitement numbing the constant ache that has taken residence deep in his chest.

Scully long-since moved back to his old desk and Jake was left once again with the empty altar of a desk belonging to his absent partner, who has slowly crept into his every waking thought. Most of his sleeping thoughts, too, apparently; he’s woken multiple times screaming Amy’s name in a cold sweat at the mental image of her savagely beaten body being found in a dirty alley beneath a pile of trash.

Six months is a long time to go without having a partner and it’s affecting Jake more than he ever could have guessed it would. He can’t stand the smell of licorice anymore because the smell is so closely associated in his mind with Amy stress-eating the candy to avoid smoking that it makes him physically ache to see anyone else eat it but her (even though she eats it like a rabbit eats lettuce and that drives him crazy). He can’t watch CNN because they used to text each other every night about The Situation Room and Erin Burnett OutFront (and their texts usually consisted of insightful thoughts from Amy and jokes from Jake), and every time he sees Erin Burnett’s face on TV he has to fight off the crazy urge to text Amy.

“You ever think maybe you like Amy?” Gina posed the question at Shaw’s two days after the Ooze incident after listening to him recount the night for the fifth time that day.

“She’s my _partner_ , of course I -”

“You know what I’m talkin’ about, doll,” she leaned across the table and tapped the end of his long nose with the tip of her finger. “I’m talkin’ about _like_ liking her. Eighth grade style.”

Outwardly he denied it. “What? No. She’s my partner and my friend and I care about her. And I’m worried about her. She’s infiltrating an international drug smuggling ring. That’s all this is.”

Inwardly, he felt something scary taking root in his brain: _feelings. Sans the z._

And those terrifying feelings just refuse to stay put in the corner of his brain where he’s repeatedly shoved them since that night, growing like weeds that just won’t die. It’s been three months since that night in Ooze and he’s ready to take a flamethrower to his head to get his feelings back where they belong - his mental repression box. They’d fit so nicely beside thoughts of his father and abandonment, if only they’d cooperate. The invitation to stake out the auto parts place is just too tempting to pass up on, so he readily accepts. Anything to get his mind off Amy.

He’s covering the back exit that’s partially hidden by an empty, unmarked white moving van parked in the alley and he’s starting to see some movement, which is getting his adrenaline pumping. He tucks his head down and peers through the rifle scope as his index finger curls around the trigger.

He sees a familiar head of jet-black hair cut to the shoulders amongst a group of men, all of whom are carrying armloads of stuff Jake will never care enough to learn about, and his heart stops. He isn’t sure until she turns her head toward the street and squints at the sun. His finger flies away from the trigger so quickly it’s as though he’s burned.

“Captain,” Jake says sharply into his radio.

“What is it?”

“It’s Amy.”

There are quiet murmurs as the rest of the team reacts. “Hold off,” Holt says loudly, and the line goes quiet. “Where is she?”

“South exit, near the moving van.” Jake never takes his eye off her. He watches her shout instructions to the men - who Jake now realizes probably work for her - and as they jog back inside the warehouse she crosses to the driver’s side. She has to pull herself up with the handle to climb inside.

The door closes behind her and she sits very still for a moment, her hands in the ten-and-two position Jake has always teased her for. But then they slowly slide down either side of the wheel and she sags forward until her forehead touches the top of the steering wheel. He can’t be sure, but it looks like her shoulders are shaking with sobs.

“Peralta, do you have a visual on Santiago?”

“Yes,” the word is broken in his dry throat.

“We’ve received instruction from her FBI handlers to pull back,” Holt explains. He sounds disappointed. “Everyone remain in position until the premises has been cleared.”

Jake watches Amy straighten up as her men hustle back out of the building. She hurriedly wipes her face when the last one exits and checks her reflection in the mirror on the underside of her visor.

One of the men joins her in the cab while the other five climb into the back and slide the door closed. Amy pulls away slowly enough that Jake’s sure the men in the back of the truck don’t stumble too much before pulling out onto the road and driving away. His radio is silent until she turns a distant corner.

“She’s gone.” Jake says, and his voice rings clearly with defeat.

Later, when he's out sullenly drinking alone at Shaw's, Rosa will appear out of nowhere and wordlessly hand him a picture of Amy from the crime scene, mid-stride. Her lips are slightly parted and her hand is blurred, frozen in the middle of reaching up to tame her newly short locks in a gentle breeze. Jake will end up propping the picture up against his lamp on his bedside table to be easily seized when he wakes up from the alley nightmare. After a month, he'll fold it in half and carry it in his pocket everywhere he goes like a talisman.

The fourth time Jake sees Amy after she’s gone undercover, he’s at the precinct.

They’ve just brought this guy in on a domestic violence charge who looks vaguely familiar and he’s screaming what Jake is sure to be violent obscenities in Spanish that make even Rosa squirm at literally everyone in the building. He keeps it up for a good thirty minutes, almost long enough for Terry to lose his cool and slam on the holding cell door hard enough to scare the guy into submission, when suddenly the elevator dings and the doors slide open.

Jake glances back out of habit and does a double-take.

It’s Amy, looking far worse than he’s ever seen her look in his life.

She’s got a horrible bloody black eye and her lip is split in two places. Her nose is bleeding and there’s a hand-shaped purple bruise on her throat. She’s pale, her cheekbones are protruding, and her eyes are sunken and gaunt. Even her collarbones are clearly visible against her skin, which suddenly looks thin and easily breakable. She’s in a low-cut shirt and cropped blue jean shorts that are dotted with what is likely her blood, and her hair is now dyed blonde at the tips, unlike it was two months ago at the warehouse.

And she looks pissed as _hell_.

“Why the _fuck_ did you pigs lock up my Archie?” She shrieks at the nearest beat cop, and Jake suddenly realizes why the guy in holding looks so familiar: he’s the guy he saw Amy on a date with at that Italian place seven months earlier.

“Ma’am, we picked him up on two counts of public intoxication and domestic violence -”

“Domestic _violence_?” She repeats incredulously, her voice rising two octaves. Everyone has stopped their activity, turned to watch the debacle unfold. Jake feels like his heart and lungs are all being compressed in Charles’ VeggieVacuum. “Archie ain’t never hurt nobody! He ain’t hurt a damn fly!”

The officer raises a skeptical eyebrow as his eyes quickly drift over her obvious injuries.

“Eyes up here, _pervert_.” She snaps. “What’s his bail?”

“I-if you would just follow me this way -” the officer leads her away and Jake feels like he can’t catch his breath. He feels hands, Gina’s hands, on his shoulders, but he can’t rip his gaze away from where she disappeared.

“Archie’s lookin’ at you,” Gina hisses in his ear.

Jake immediately throws his attention back to his computer screen, trying to ignore the flush he feels rising up the back of his neck. He isn’t sure if he wants to kick the door of the holding cell down and deck _Archie_ right in the mouth or if he wants to lock Amy at the top of a very tall tower guarded by fifty fire-breathing dragons so that no one can ever touch her again without his permission. Gina’s thumbs rub at the knots at the base of his neck, but Jake still can’t breathe.

His phone buzzes on his desk with a text.

_From: Rosa Diaz  
Pull it together Peralta_

Jake clenches his teeth and flips his phone face-down on the desk. After a moment, he reaches into his pocket and pulls his picture of Amy out and stares at her face until his eyes can't make sense of shape anymore.

She’s gone for forty-five minutes and when she emerges there’s some kind of new-found understanding lighting the officer’s eyes. He leads her to the holding cell where Archie is already waiting by the door, looking smug.

“Thanks, baby,” he says as the door swings open.

And before she has a chance to respond, Archie has her swept up in a borderline pornographic kiss. Jake can feel his eyes bulging as Archie’s hands rake down her sides, but even through his sudden tunnel-vision, Jake sees Amy wince when Archie’s hands squeeze her ribcage. His vision goes red.

He’s on his feet before he knows what’s happening, ignoring Gina’s whispered protests and shoving the picture back in his back pocket. “Gotta get something from my car,” he announces loudly to no one in particular. The doors are sliding closed, but Jake manages to catch one with his hand. “Sorry, folks,” he says as he forces the doors back open. “Just gotta get something from my car.”

Archie looks unimpressed, but Amy’s eyes are wild with panic.

Jake gathers himself up in the far corner of the elevator as the doors slide shut and tries not to pay attention to the way Amy clings to Archie’s arm.

He hears three soft bumps. He glances up and Amy is gently tapping the back of her head against the wall of the elevator behind her. She looks at him from the corner of her eye and then taps her head again, twice, then three times in quick succession. He fixates his gaze on the doors in front of him as she taps out a pattern that sounds familiar.

They exit first and Amy shoots him one last glance over her shoulder before they part ways; he toward the parking garage and she toward wherever she slept at night.

It isn’t until he gets to his car and does a little research before he realizes she was talking to him in Morse Code.

_It is almost over._

He goes to Shaw’s with the entire nine-nine and it only takes one scotch on the rocks before he’s fully in tears and choking out his newest truth to those who pat him consolingly on the back: he misses her so damn much and she might actually die before he has a chance to tell her that he _like-likes_ her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second half.
> 
> I'm sorry.

The first time Jake sees Amy after she’s returned from her mission, she’s in a coma.

He got the call around three in the morning from Captain Holt’s personal cell phone number. The sting went wrong. Someone interfered. She didn’t have time to find an exit. She got caught in the crossfire.

He doesn’t remember much about dressing or getting in his car or shooting through the streets. He’s just bursting through the doors of the emergency room as they race her back to the OR on a gurney and he watches in frozen horror as a nurse quickly mops up the blood trail off the tiles left in Amy’s wake.

Holt manages to ease him back into a seat and Jake grips the armrests so hard the cheap plastic splinters beneath his bone-white fingers.

The rest of the nine-nine show up over the next two hours, and as soon as Scully comes straggling in, Holt tells them the Reader’s Digest version of the story.

The eight-three was supposed to be working with the FBI and Amy to orchestrate a massive bust - the _final_ bust - in a warehouse in their district, but like a demonic angel of hell itself, The Vulture swooped in at the last second, misunderstanding the FBI-sponsored bust to be solely that of the eight-three. By the time he’d realized his mistake, it was too late; Major Crimes officers were already storming the building and the gunfight was on.

Amy was hit four times in the torso by Major Crimes and left to bleed out at the back of the warehouse. The one good thing about it is that every mob boss was there, and every last one of them is dead.

Including Archibald Rancun.

An additional four hours pass after Scully’s arrival in which Jake stares at one square tile a few feet in front of him. The other detectives are talking quietly, speaking in hushed tones and shooting him concerned looks every now and then. None of them are brave enough to try to talk to him, even Charles, so Jake just ignores them.

He doesn’t move until he hears The Vulture’s voice at the reception counter, and his body launches him forward without a conscious thought. Jake manages to slam his fist into The Vulture’s temple before he feels concrete arms around his upper half. A superhuman force yanks him up and away as The Vulture stumbles back from the force of the hit, but that doesn’t stop Jake from lurching forward in a foolish attempt to break free and to beat The Vulture to death right there in the ER waiting room.

Terry carries Jake off to a semi-private waiting room and doesn’t let go until Jake sags against him in defeat. Terry just sits him down in a better-padded seat, one hand constantly on his shoulder. The other detectives file in and Jake glances up to Rosa’s approving smirk. Holt is the last one in, and if he has any desire to reprimand Jake, he doesn’t show it. The thought occurs to him that he's so far past the point of caring about what the others think of him, so he pulls Amy's picture out of his pocket and lets silent tears drip slowly down his face.

They’re just past the seven-and-a-half hour mark when a thoroughly exhausted nurse in green scrubs appears in the doorway, face buried in a clipboard. She glances up at the suddenly-alert detectives. “Amy Santiago?” She asks tentatively.

The room is deathly silent, and Jake holds his breath.

“It’s been touch-and-go for the last few hours and she coded three times while in surgery, but she managed to pull through.” Jake is so thankful that he’s sitting because he feels his entire body go weak. She made it. She made it. “The coma is medically-induced to control the amount of swelling in her brain and to encourage her body’s natural healing process,” the nurse tells them, and Jake’s heart stops.

Aside from the gunshot wounds and all the internal damage they caused, her latest injuries include a pretty severe concussion, a punctured lung, and a hairline fracture to the heel of her left foot. X-Rays revealed three broken ribs on her right side, another hairline fracture in her right shoulder blade, a deeply bruised sternum, and a crack in the right side of her hip that all appear to be older. Jake’s mind is spinning, trying to imagine a scenario in which she received such a brutal beating from a fellow lefty, before remembering seeing her a month earlier looking like a human punching bag.

“You all may go in and see her, but she is in the Intensive Care Unit, which has a strict one-person limit on guests.”

Jake goes last. It’s an unspoken understanding. One by one, the detectives follow the nurse out of the waiting room, and Jake tries not to seem as impatient as he feels. It’s exceedingly difficult because he keeps jiggling his leg the way that always drives Santiago nuts at work when he’s deep in a case file or waiting to interrogate a perp.

Holt stays right beside him and watches calmly as each detective returns to the waiting room. Jake’s a little unnerved; they all come back looking winded and they all look at him with the same unreadable look on their face like they’re afraid whatever’s waiting for him in Amy’s room is going to break him. Holt stands and follows the nurse without a backwards glance, just to return five minutes later. Jake can tell beneath the Captain’s steely exterior that the man is shaken.

The nurse looks at Jake expectantly. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead as he stands and pockets his Amy picture, and the walk down the hallways feels exceptionally like a walk to his death.

“How long have you been married to her?” The nurse asks politely.

“Five years,” he says without thinking.

“She’s a fighter.” He can hear a smile in the nurse’s voice, and he has to clench his jaw to keep from bursting into tears right then and there. Because, God, if there’s only one truth he knows about Amy Santiago, it’s that she’s a fighter.

“I know.” He manages to choke a few moments later. The nurse smiles at him, and he detects pity in her eyes.

The ICU is buzzing with activity when Jake and his nurse escort arrive. He looks around quickly, absorbing the fact that each room’s inward-facing wall is made entirely of glass and the doorway is just an open arch with no actual door. Most of the lights are turned off but the mid-morning sun gives each room an out-of-place cheerful glow. He averts his eyes from the occupants lying in the beds in the rooms he passes.

Amy’s room is close to a corner in the ICU, tucked away from the bustling hive of the place. Her lights are on and Jake clenches his fists in an effort to prepare himself for what he is about to see, but the moment her bed comes into view it’s like his heart has dropped out of his body.

She looks skeletal. Her skin is almost white and paper-thin and drawn taut over the bones of her face and neck and the small dip of her chest revealed by her hospital gown. At least a dozen machines crowd the area around her head and her mouth is forced open by a tube down her throat that’s helping her breathe easier, as the nurse explains. There’s a chair at the edge of her bed and Jake stumbles toward it almost blindly.

He lands in it with a loud, harsh exhale of the air trapped in his lungs. The nurse hovers in the doorway for a moment and then disappears into the chaos of the ICU.

Amy’s hands are limp against the sheet and they both have masses of wires and needles sticking out of them but that doesn’t stop Jake from slowly and gently gathering her right hand up in both of his. He squeezes as softly as he can when he realizes her fingers are like ice against his palms. He hears a steady drip of something hitting her sheets and realizes that it’s his tears; he hadn’t even realized he’d been crying. He ducks his head down and presses his lips to her fingers.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry they did this to you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop them.”

He spends the duration of his day with her and slumps over in the chair awkwardly in his sleep that night.

Captain Holt is very understanding when Jake calls to cash in all his available sick days and personal days the following morning, of which he has many. Thank God for rollover. “Take an extra two weeks to be used at your discretion.” He says. Jake thanks him profusely.

Jake stays by Amy’s side damn near constantly, leaving only when his clothes are too dirty to be socially acceptable or when another detective or one of Amy’s friends or family members show up to visit her. He meets Amy’s parents, Rosalinda and Mark, and four of her brothers, Jason, Zack, Nick, and Cameron. Each of their faces light up upon realizing who Jake is, assuring him that they’ve all heard good things about him at various times over the years.

His heart swells at the thought of Amy telling her family about him.

But there are long stretches of time in which he’s alone with her, and at first he’s too scared to do much of anything. He’s certain that even a loud, sudden sound will puncture her skin. It isn’t until he walks in to find three of the machines gone and Amy breathing just fine on her own without that damn tube that he starts to realize that eventually, she’s going to wake up and be okay again.

From then on, he brings his old detective novels with him and reads. Sometimes he reads them aloud to her, other times he just quietly scoffs or throws out comments about plot holes as he reads to himself. At six every evening he turns on CNN on the tiny television mounted to the wall across from her bed and says the things he’d usually text out loud to her. It’s almost as good as texting her, until he glances over and sees her firmly-closed eyelids.

He watches her make improvements day by day and eventually she’s got some color back in her skin and she doesn’t look quite so breakable anymore. They move her from the ICU into the regular hospital and Jake rejoices at the comfortable armchair in the corner of the room.

With her movement to the regular hospital comes more shared visitation time with her family and friends, who are all starting to become _his_ friends, too. He spent three hours chatting with Rosalinda about all sorts of things over the bed while they each held one of Amy’s hands. He gave Amy’s admittedly misguided-in-love friend Kylie some much needed, gentle advice on how to end things with the on-again-off-again boyfriend he remembered Amy complaining about once. He joined Jason, Zack, and Cameron in goading Nick into admitting he does have a secret girlfriend named Jess he isn’t ready to introduce to the family just yet, and laughed along at the good-natured teasing that followed.

And weirdly, immersing himself in her world doesn’t scare him. He’s a little surprised at just how thoroughly he enjoys it. Every person he meets with a story to share about Amy just makes him love her more.

Which is why it’s getting so damn hard to walk in and see her still under three weeks after being admitted.

It’s a Tuesday night when things finally change. He’s settled into the armchair, the television on but muted, and his nose is buried in his favorite detective novel.

Everything is great. The story is as riveting as it was the last time he read it. And then he gets to a shootout he’d forgotten about in the book. The main character’s partner is hit. He bleeds out and dies on the way to the hospital.

Jake snaps the book closed and hurls it across the room.

He’s panting like he’s just run a great distance. He turns to her, thankful that her hands are no longer tied down with twisting tubes and wires as he seizes one.

“Amy,” he says firmly. “You have to wake up.”

She doesn’t.

“Please. God, _please_ wake up.  I miss you. I miss hearing you tell me to knock it off when I’m doing something to distract you, I miss you rolling your eyes at me, I even miss the way you stress-eat licorice and you _know_ how much that drives me crazy,” he drops his forehead to her mattress and rests there. “I _need_ you, Ames.”

He stays that way for a long time, unable and unwilling to move, until he drifts into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He wakes up to a quiet cough, which sends him sitting up bolt-upright.

Her eyes are drooping and half-open and he can tell she’s fighting against a mighty tide of morphine but he doesn’t care because _holy shit she’s finally awake!_

“ _Amy_ ,” he whispers. She feels so damn far away and he edges toward her inch by inch until he’s practically wrapped around the side of her bed.

She lifts a hand and it lands on top of his head clumsily before sliding down the side of his face. He catches it in his and holds it against his cheek, nuzzling into her touch and pressing a quick kiss to the inside of her wrist. Her eyelids are already dropping again, but for the first time since she’d left for her mission, her eyes sparkle.

He holds her hand against his face for a long time after she falls asleep again.

In the morning he texts Holt to let him know about Amy’s brief surfacing, and within the hour, her room is full of the nine-nine.

She’s in and out of consciousness for the next three days, and on the third day her eyes open at 7:13 AM and stay open.

Jake makes sure he’s the first person she sees. He glances up from his book at her slight movement and his heart skips a beat when he realizes that her eyes are open. Like, wide open. And she’s looking up at the muted TV with a furrowed brow.

He’d accidentally left it on cartoons.

“Amy,” he murmurs. Her head falls toward him and her eyes soften immediately. “Hey,”

The corners of her mouth twitch upward, but she says nothing.

“You feeling okay?” He asks as he places his book on her bedside table. She nods slowly. “Comfortable?” Again, a slow nod. He hesitates before steeling himself. “Do you know who I am?”

She stares at him for a solid ten seconds and Jake feels like he’s going to die. “Jake,” she finally whispers.

And it’s like a whispered prayer.

Her parents and her brothers are the first people he texts and they’re all there within a couple of hours. Still, Amy is almost mute the entire time they’re there. Rosalinda cries while Mark holds Amy’s hand and Jake looks on helplessly from the corner. He knows his partner needs something - he just isn’t sure what.

Her doctors gently tell her, in as little as detail as possible, what happened.

“Who was it?” She rasps when her doctors leave.

“The Vulture,” he spits through clenched teeth.

She doesn’t look surprised. Just tired.

He still stays with her most days and nights, still only leaving to shower or to refresh the three or four novels he brings in with him. She never asks why he’s there so often, and Jake likes to think that it’s because she just knows his presence at her hospital bedside is a given. He also likes to think that, were their roles reversed, she’d take up a 24 hour vigil at his side, too.

She spends most of her time gazing up at the ceiling or dozing off throughout the day for the first week she’s awake. She never pulls her hand from his grasp, either, even though he holds the hand on her arm that doesn’t have an IV in the crease of her elbow. He softly and absentmindedly strokes her knuckles with the pad of his thumb as they watch CNN together.

“I know you’ve explained the deficit to me at least three times, but I already forgot what it means again,” he says. He glances at her and she’s got that _you’ve got to be kidding me, Peralta_ look on her face and it steals his breath away. He never thought he’d actually miss her acting like a know-it-all but seeing her make that face is like being reunited with a long-lost friend. Her eyes soften as they study his face and it’s the closest she’s come to genuinely smiling since waking up.

He leaves a few hours later to grab a quick nap, shower, and change.

He can hear her screaming from down the hall when he gets back to the hospital.

His books tumble from his hands and he leaves them in a heap as he races toward her room. He skids to a halt outside her open door and is momentarily stunned motionless at the scene before him. Four nurses are holding down her thrashing limbs while a fifth struggles to inject something in her IV drip. “ _NO, NO!”_ She’s screaming so loud that her torso is rising up off the mattress, like the woman who was possessed by a demon in that one horror movie he only got half-way through.

Jake only pauses for half a second to absorb the scene before him before he rushes toward her.

“Amy!” He shoulders the nurse pinning her left arm down to the side and her eyes are wild with unbridled terror when they meet his. “Calm down, it’s okay, everything’s o-”

“Don’t, don’t _let them_ ,” she gasps.

“Don’t let them what?”

“The nightmares,” she’s still squirming, but the full-body arches off the bed have stopped. “I see things, and I…” her voice trails and thick, hot tears spill down her temples and into her hair.

It takes a minute, but Jake finally pieces together what she’s trying to tell him. By then he’s too late to stop the nurses from injecting more morphine in her IV. He watches her helplessly tug at the tube in her arm, never hard enough to pull it loose, and stare at the ceiling for a long time after they leave. Her brows are knit together, a muscle in her jaw twitching, and every now and then she sniffles quietly.

“I know it doesn’t mean a lot,” he says, trying to sound firm but coming off as uncertain, “but I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna stay right here and I’m gonna hold your hand and I promise - I _swear_ \- I won’t let anything else happen to you.” She blinks a couple of times and fresh tears leak from the corners of her eyes. “Amy, I’ll die before I let anything or anyone hurt you again. I’ll protect you with my life. You don’t have to be afraid to sleep, because I’ll be right here with you and I’ll hold your hand and I’ll never leave you alone in this, okay? You’ll _never_ be alone with this.”

She turns her head and her gaze is hard and piercing and Jake does his best to not look away. “Promise?” She whispers.

“I swear it on my life.”

She’s still gazing at him when her eyelids begin to droop, and slowly, slowly, she’s pulled down into sleep. Even in sleep, her fingers curl tightly around his. Jake resolves to never leave her side again.

Amy wakes up several hours later, blinking blearily at him. He guesses he’s looked away from her face maybe ten seconds total the entire time she’s slept, studying her closely, waiting for tell-tale signs of subconscious distress that never come. The way she looks at him once she becomes a little more aware of her surroundings makes his heart do strange things in his chest; he feels like an animal caught in the headlights, but somehow also like that moment right before the roller coaster drops down the first big plunge.

“I was in Chicago two weeks...before, and while I was there I met a guy who cooked and sold meth.” She says hoarsely. Jake clenches his jaw, unsure of where she’s going with her story. “And his Christian name...was George Peenslinger.”

There’s this long, pregnant pause in which Jake fully digests the information she’s just divulged. Her eyes are twinkling with mirth. “P-Peenslinger?” Jake repeats, desperately trying to choke back his laughter. She nods slowly. “Oh...my _God._ ” He grins so widely it feels like his face is splitting in half and, to his amazement, she grins back.

“I know,” she’s laughing, like really laughing, and his heart soars. “I couldn’t believe it, I wanted to text you so bad. And I helped CPD with intel on where he’d be so they could bust him, so my name is actually on the arrest report.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Perp Name Hall of Fame _winner_!”

She laughs again and the sound makes his blood feel like it’s pleasantly simmering and he already can’t wait to hear it again. “Oh, I wanted to text you _so bad_ ,” she sighs. “Like, constantly. I had to voluntarily give up my personal phone to stop myself, but then I realized that I have your number memorized.” A faint blush creeps across her cheeks, like she’s vaguely embarrassed about the fact that she has his cell phone number memorized.

Which is stupid, considering he’s had hers memorized since her fourth day at the nine-nine.

"I wanted to text you, too,” he says. There are so many emotions flickering in her eyes, more emotions than he’s probably ever felt in his life, which spurs him on. “And call you. And Facetime and Skype and Face _book_ and Tweet and Tumble and however else people talk now. I even got close to sending you a message on _LinkedIn_.” She chuckles and he can’t help but to laugh a little at himself. “I was a little bit of a wreck after you left.”

Her thumb drifts up his knuckles and she adjusts her head to be more fully turned toward him. “Me, too,” her voice is so soft that he has to lean in closer to hear her, not that he minds. “I missed your facial expressions.”

“I missed you yelling at me to stop jiggling my leg under the desk.”

“I missed how you could tell when I was working too hard and how you’d distract me until I wasn’t so stressed out anymore.”

“I missed you sucking up to Holt.”

“I missed how you make up songs for literally everything you do.”

“I missed making sex tape jokes at you.”

“I actually missed your sex tape jokes.”

“I missed _you_.” Her eyes widen a little in surprise and he doesn’t blame her - even he’s surprised at the conviction in his voice. But it’s the truth and it’s out there now, so he decides to just go for it. “I missed everything about you. It was like there was a hole in my life and no matter how hard I tried to pretend like it wasn’t there, it _was_.” He stares down at her hand in his and wonders how something so small and delicate has such a firm, unbreakable grasp on his heart. But he knows it isn’t as delicate as it looks; this is the same hand he’s seen shooting guns and slamming into tables and tugging at her hair in frustration and throwing the bird at cab drivers who cut her off in traffic while he howled with laughter in the passenger's seat. “You’re such a big part of my life and I didn’t even realize it until you weren’t anymore. You’re...you’re my best friend.”

“What about Charles?”

“Yeah...don’t tell him,” Jake chuckles. He can feel tears in his eyes, threatening to spill out over his face, and he tries to fight them off with jokes. “You’re my best friend, but, like, on the down low.”

She giggles and looks up at him with so much adoration he almost can’t breathe at how wonderfully familiar slopes and curves of her face are. “I missed you, too. For the record.” She reaches up and wipes a tear that’s fallen away with the pad of her thumb. She keeps it there, fingernails gently scraping across his stubble, her touch warmer and steadier than when she’d first woken up. “I don’t know when it happened, but you’re my favorite person to talk to, and I didn’t realize it until I couldn’t talk to you anymore.” She smiles at him and Jake’s never felt so content in his life. “Oh, and also for the record, it _does_ mean a lot.”

“What does?”

“That you’ve had my back,” she says it with a shrug. “It’s...nice.”

She looks like she wants to say more, but is afraid of crossing some imaginary boundary between the two of them. And Jake’s okay with that, for now, because he knows he has all the time in the world to show her just how wrong she is.

From then on, she’s in much better spirits. She still winces occasionally, still pauses mid-sentence as a wave of pain or nausea washes through her, but she’s sitting up and engaging in conversation (a little tentatively, if anything). Things stay pleasantly surface-level for her and her other visitors and Jake takes a liking for watching the facial expressions flit across her face as she listens to stories about things that she’s missed in her friends’ and family’s lives.

And at night, when visiting hours are over and Jake’s reclining in the arm chair up against the side of her bed, he talks. He tells her every significant event that she’s missed (like the new ban on soup in the precinct after Charles accidentally spilled some down a prostitute’s bra and she punched him right in the junk) and she listens intently.

He almost never lets go of her hand, and when he does, it’s like he’s thrown off-balance. It’s like missing a limb when his fingers aren’t intertwined with hers. All of a sudden, Amy Santiago is his center of gravity. He thinks it must be like when astronomers realized the earth revolves around the sun; groundbreaking and incredible, but the way that it’s always been. Since the dawn of time, since the dawn of them.

She’s released from the hospital a week later, and Jake drives her home. Her footsteps are a little smaller now, a little more of a shuffle than her usual purposeful strides, and her shoulders slope down now like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible on the walk to his car. Jake keeps his attention on her from the corner of his eye as he drives to her apartment, watching her gaze out the window. Her whole face relaxes when he pulls onto her street.

Jake manages to snag a spot almost right outside the entryway to her apartment, which has actually never happened to him before in the handful of times he’s come over here, and he rushes around to her side to hold her door open for her the moment his keys are out of the ignition. She lets him throw his arm around her shoulders, tucking herself into his side as they walk up the steps.

He’s had her keys since her FBI handlers dropped them off at the hospital three days into her admittance, and she looks a little confused when he pulls them out of his pocket. But she says nothing, just smiles a little uncertainly as he unlocks her front door.

It isn’t until after she’s comfortably tucked in and propped up on her bed with the TV on that he runs out to the drugstore to pick up all of her prescriptions. From there he goes to the grocery store and gets all the basics to restock her ten-months-empty kitchen and a box of Fruit Roll-Ups for himself to snack on.

He drops by his apartment and grabs a few t-shirts, basketball shorts, and a few pairs of jeans stuffed in one of his overnight bags. Just in case.

She’s exactly where he left her when he gets back to her place, but he can tell she’s been up and walking around since he’d left. Her mail is shuffled and has moved from her kitchen counter to her coffee table and the afghan that was draped across the back of her couch is now wrapped around her shoulders.

“You’re back,” she says softly. He leans against her doorframe and smiles as an ever-swelling wave of affection washes through his chest.

“I got stuff for dinner. You feelin’ tacos?”

Her head falls back against her headboard and she nods. “Did you get -”

“Your meds? Yeah, they’re in the kitchen. You’ve still got forty-five minutes before you’re supposed to take the first one, though. Plenty of time.”

“Actually, I was gonna ask if you got any Fruit Roll-Ups?”

He laughs. “Yeah, I did. How’d you know?”

She quirks an eyebrow over her trademark Santiago smile. “I was weirdly craving one earlier. Also, I know it’s been almost a year, but I still know you, Peralta.”

And oh, man, he wants to crawl up the bed and kiss the daylights out of her. He could swear her eyes darken a little, too, at the look he’s sure is on his face. But he doesn’t want to spook her, he doesn’t want her to feel like she owes him anything. So instead he glances down at his feet.

“I’m gonna get that started,” he says, gesturing to the kitchen over his shoulder. “Yell if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay. Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For everything.”

He studies her face, flashes her a crooked half-smile, and nods.

Thirty minutes later, he glances up and spots her shuffling out of her bedroom. Her afghan is still wrapped around her shoulders and she’s stifling a yawn behind one of her hands. She gathers up the afghan in her hand as she sniffs the air, looking appreciative of the smell. “That smells amazing,” she says as she slides onto one of her barstools.

“Thanks!” He says brightly. “It’s the one ‘ethnic’ dish my mom taught me,” he makes air-quotes around the word and Amy snorts. “My mom’s sweet, but she’s accidentally racist. Like, a lot.”

Amy shakes her head, still smiling. “I bet she’s great.” She says as Jake shuts off the stovetop.

“Oh, yeah, she’s one of the best,” he says, spooning taco meat into the shells he’s got set up on two plates. “You’ll love her.”

Heat creeps across his face as he realizes the significance of his wording. He risks a glance up at her, but the look on his face reassures him that he hasn’t made a mistake.

She’s just finished eating when Jake’s phone starts going off with his reminder alarm for her first round of meds. He gathers their plates and takes them to the kitchen to wash them while she disappears into her bathroom to take her pills.

“Hey, Jake?” He glances up from scrubbing her pan and finds her hovering in the doorway of her bedroom, tapping the wood uncertainly. “Um, I was wondering, uh, if…” her hand drifts up to scratch at a spot behind her earlobe. “I mean, um...are you...uh,”

He shuts off the kitchen sink and wipes his hands on the dishtowel on the counter. “Amy, you can ask me.” He says gently.

Her breath escapes in a huff. “Will you stay here tonight?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just that, I dunno, I sleep better when you’re around.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“But if you have to be at work or something -”

“I’ve still got twenty sick days I’ve saved up over the years that I haven’t used yet.” Her eyebrows raise incredulously. He shrugs. “Been saving them for something important. Anyways, yes, I’ll definitely stay here tonight.”

“Do you need to go home and -”

“No, I brought clothes,” he points at his overnight bag beside her front door. She looks between the bag and his face, clearly surprised. Again, he shrugs. “I was gonna stay here either way. Just in case. I’m glad you asked, though.”

He finishes washing and drying her dishes and joins her on her living room couch when she waves him over. She flips through her DVR and he groans jokingly upon realizing her storage space is almost completely full of unseen episodes of House Hunters International from her time undercover. She just rolls her eyes and ends up in the On-Demand section.

He raises his eyebrows when she picks Step Brothers. “I just need to laugh,” she says quietly, and he clenches his jaw.

Her head ends up on his shoulder within the first five minutes, and he immediately lifts his arm to wrap around her shoulder. She scoots a little closer, tucks her head into the curve of his neck, and sighs in contentment. He presses a soft kiss to the crown of her head.

After the movie, she rises and disappears into her bathroom to take her next round of medicine, and he changes into his shorts quickly in her living room. He digs through his bag for a moment and curses when he realizes he’s left his phone charger in his car.

“Ames,” he calls.

Her head appears around the corner of her bathroom, toothbrush hanging out of her mouth and brows raised in question.

“I left my charger in my car,” he says. Her eyes dart toward her window, then back to him. “I’ll just be a sec, okay?”

“You’re good,” she says through a mouthful of toothpaste.

The damn thing is laid out across his passenger's seat. He’s working on untying one of the seven knots in the chord when he gets back up to Amy’s apartment, growling at his lack of success. “These things are like earphones, I swear it just tangled itself in protest of me leaving it out in my car all day.”

Amy doesn’t respond. Jake glances up.

She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor next to his discarded pants, looking at what appears to be a postcard in her hand. “Ah, shit, I’m sorry,” he says. “I was trying to hurry before you came back out -”

Her tearful gaze flickers up to him and he freezes.

She found his picture of her.

“You were there?” She whispers.

He slowly sets his charger on her kitchen counter and joins her on the ground, keeping a good two-foot distance between them. It looks like every muscle in her body is quivering, the photo trembling between her fingers like a leaf in a strong breeze. Inwardly, he curses himself for not remembering the damn thing before leaving it out for her to find.

“Yeah. We got an anonymous tip -”

“Frankie.”

“- that said...uh, I don’t remember,” her eyes are closed, so he presses on. “It said that this auto parts manufacturing plant was gonna be robbed, but they didn’t say by who. We were all there.”

“Did you take this picture?”

“No, Rosa did.”

“Did you see me?” Tears are falling down her face, but she doesn’t move to wipe them away, It’s like she doesn’t notice they’re there.

“Uh...yeah,” he swallows and feels his Adam’s Apple bob nervously. “I was on a rooftop. I saw you through the scope of a sniper rifle.”

A little color drains from her face, but otherwise, she does not react. “I had a feeling,” she mumbles. “Felt like I was being watched.”

Jake says nothing, terrified that at any moment she’s going to stand and demand he get out.

Her fingertips drift over her photographed face, then up toward the worn, stained edges of the paper itself. “Have you been carrying this around with you?” She asks, her voice strained.

“At first I kept it at home, next to my bed. I, uh, I had these nightmares...and when I woke up from them, it helped to have that nearby. But then, after, like, a month, I started carrying it. I carried it everywhere.”

“Did you have it when...when Archie…”

He feels his blood begin to boil immediately, but he’s still more afraid of scaring Amy than working out his Archie-related aggression. “Yeah,” he admits softly. “I pulled it out when you went back with that beat cop. It’s the only thing that kept me from totally losing my cool.”

She nods absently, her eyes staring straight through him at something he can’t see. “I’m the one who killed him.” She says after a pause.

Well that’s not what he’s expecting.

“I killed him the night of the sting.” She’s whispering, her thumbs rubbing the edge of the picture compulsively. “He was trying to...he was going to…” her voice breaks and she glances up at the ceiling. “I snapped. I lost it. I jumped on top of him and I choked the life out of him with my bare hands.”

Jake glances down at the hands in question. He doesn’t dare speak.

“He just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. That’s the only advantage I had over him. Because the other time, when he got picked up, I let it get out of hand,” she inhales through her nose, still staring at the ceiling, and her words begin to quiver. “I knew his reputation, I checked his rap sheet. I knew what I was getting into, but...but he caught me off-guard that night. I’m positive he would have killed me if he wasn’t drunk. He would’ve caved my chest in if he hadn’t stumbled lifting his foot up.”

Jake drops his head and tries to remember how to drag air into his lungs.

“I was so ready to quit, I was ready to just say ‘fuck it’ and leave the operation, FBI be damned, and then I got to the precinct and saw the way you looked at me and I realized that I couldn’t let you down. I had to finish. I had to.” She finally turns her gaze down to meet his and he can see the demons haunting her in her face. “I killed him with my hands. I felt the life leave him. And you wanna know what the most fucked up part is?”

_No,_ he wants to say.

“I was glad. I was glad when I realized what I’d done. I murdered someone, and I was happy about it.” Sobs are starting to choke her words. “You’ve been carrying this picture of me everywhere and you’ve had all this faith in me and you’ve been taking care of me and I’m a _murderer_.”

All his training on how to soothe a victim goes flying out the window as she dissolves into tears. He scrambles closer to her and pulls her in close, tightening his grip around her until he feels her hands clawing at his back. “Sh, sh, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over, Ames, it’s over. You’re safe now.”

“You hate me,” he hears her moan.

He lifts a hand and tangles his fingers in her hair. “I do not. I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you, Amy, I’ll never hate you. You did exactly what you had to do to survive, and I admire you so much for that. I love you, okay? I _love_ you.”

She stiffens against him, and for just a moment he thinks it’s because he’s hurting her, until his words catch up to him. Her head lifts away from the damp spot on his shoulder and she’s looking at him like he’s just revealed he’s secretly a lizard-person. “You...what?”

A nervous, awkward laugh escapes his throat. “I…” She chews the inside of her cheek, eyes guarded, and he huffs. Enough is enough. “I love you, Amy.”

She lights up. “You do?”

“I really do. I love you.”

“Like... _love_? _In love_?”

Another nervous laugh. “Yeah. Is that okay?”

“I thought you thought I was a dork?”

“I do. But a loveable dork. Like Hermione. But you haven’t answered the question. Is that - is _this_ okay? I don’t need you to say it back, I’m not expecting to you to, because I know...I know things have to happen, and you have to...uh…” he trails uncertainly. “I know readjusting is gonna be hard, but...but I want to help you. I want to be the one who chases away your nightmares and makes you dinner and reminds you to take your medicine and all the other stuff that you need. I want to be the one who takes care of you. Is that okay?”

Instead of answering, her hands rise up to the back of his neck and pull his face down until his lips are firmly planted against hers and she’s everything he ever imagined she’d be: warm, soft, and _perfect_.

“Why’d you have to say it after I told you _that?_ ” She asks later, when they’re laying in her bed. She’s trying to sound light, but he senses her timidity. He automatically curls his arm around her waist to hold her a little more tightly in response, and he can feel the healing scar of one bullet wound beneath his palm.

“Because...because,” he says. Apparently it’s all the answer she needs, because she just wiggles backwards until they’re perfectly slotted together. He breathes in the scent of her hair, feeling at peace for the first time in a year. In his life, if he’s being totally honest. “I love you,” he murmurs against the back of her neck. “I’m glad you’re home.”

Her fingers wrap around his hand, inadvertently pressing his palm a little closer, and another wave of thankfulness for the greatly improving health of the woman in his arms washes through him.

She’d finally say ‘I love you’ back two months later, on her first day back at the nine-nine, when he finds her catching her breath in the evidence locker. Jake kisses her in front of their friends a few days after that when they’re all out together, celebrating Amy’s return to work, and grins against Amy’s lips when Gina screeches “ _FINALLY_!” while pretending not to notice the exchange of money between nearly everyone at the precinct.


End file.
